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Five of every six calls to the San Diego County phone network designed to help people apply for food stamps and other benefits don’t get through, and those that do face an average wait of more than 30 minutes, an internal county report concludes.

More than 350,000 calls a month don’t get answered because the county Health and Human Services Agency has not hired enough workers or installed enough phone lines, the study said.

The system picks up about 68,000 calls per month.

Of those, 40 percent are answered by a county employee, 24 percent hang up during the automated cycle, 21 percent get help in the automated system or get transferred and 15 percent are answered by a contractor, according to the report.

“Technology solutions are insufficient for the size of (Health and Human Services Agency) and not proactively anticipating the needs of the organization,” the study said.

Health and Human Services Agency Director Nick Macchione said he is committed to implementing recommendations from the study, and noted that his department already has made progress.

“We knew we needed to get some innovations and ideas about how to improve throughput,” he said. “From the day I arrived to the present day we’ve been re-engineering, how do we find better, faster more cost-effective ways to serve our clients?”

The county plans to boost the call-center staff from 59 to 155 and enhance training for existing workers, and add at least 50 phone lines for a total of at least 192, he said.

The report was written by InTelegy, a Northern California consultancy that designs and builds call centers. The Watchdog obtained a copy of the final draft, which the county said cost $71,700.

Many of the recommendations are similar to suggestions made in recent years by community nonprofit groups that help poor families navigate the process of applying for public benefits in San Diego County.

For example, InTelegy suggests the county encourage clients to apply for benefits online or over the telephone.

The study also recommends county officials spruce up welfare offices, hire more caseworkers, install scanning equipment at application centers and interview more clients by telephone to avoid delays.

“Lost and delayed documents ‘create’ work and frustrate clients,” the report noted.

William Oswald of the Caring Council was among a group of advocates that urged supervisors to improve access to social services in 2009 after San Diego County recorded the lowest rate of eligible residents signing up for the program in 24 metro regions across the country.

“It’s nice to see (the report) in some ways, in that it does indeed validate what we’re saying,” said Oswald, who is also a professor in the School of Human Services at Springfield College. “The issue is when they get embarrassed by how bad things are, will they will fix it?”

Macchione said his office has more than doubled the number of people receiving food stamps in recent years, to nearly 250,000.

According to the Food Research and Action Center in Washington D.C., San Diego County still ranked last among 22 urban regions with 40 percent of eligible people enrolled in the program last year. But that was up from 27 percent in 2006.

The county has spent $3.6 million so far to improve access to food stamps, welfare and other services, Macchione said. He plans to spend even more on kiosk scanners for the welfare offices and making other technological improvements to streamline the application process, he said.

The innovations he is making are being noticed by others around the state, Macchione said. Next week, his staff is hosting a webinar for five Bay Area counties trying to improve services to its neediest residents, he said.

“San Diego is leading the way on this,” he said. “Other counties are replicating pieces, if not entire packages of what we’re doing.”

Joni Halpern runs the Supportive Parents Information Network, a nonprofit law group that helps poor families apply for and stay eligible for public benefits. Halpern has spent years advocating for ease of access to benefits.

She welcomed the InTelegy report and said it does not go far enough because even if the recommendations are fully implemented, no one person will be held accountable for a client’s case.

“There is nobody in charge of a caseload,” she said. “There is no person who is responsible for making sure an outcome is correct.”

Macchione said the system is not flawless but he defended the “wraparound” model that allows any caseworker accessing a client’s file to help process a claim or resolve a problem.

“It takes longer to have the workforce, but we’ve seen the benefit,” he said.

Halpern said the report does show the county appears serious about improving its record of service to the poor.

“I wish they had started out with this study, but since they didn’t I’m glad it’s here now,” she said. “I think it’s the beginning of change, not the end.”